I didn't think the Census tracked that data. The only instances I've seen it or where it has been been relevant is in a touristy or heavy commerce (retail or general biz) situation. I always thought that the area (municpality, etc.) collected that info.

Well....

I can see how it could be extrapolated using the economic census data on employment and the regular census data...kind of.....

# full time jobs by place and area against # full time workers with certain regular census data......never seen numbers though......hmmm.....that reminds me, when is the 2005 economic census available online??

“The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- See more at: http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-ph....r7W02j3S.dpuf

I have used daytime population numbers, but they were done using voodoo estimating techniques. I have never seen actual statistics. We looked at jobs in town, commuting out of town, and hotel occupancy, ratio of daytime to overnight guests (from surveys) then used the planner's celebral constant (educated guess) to get to a final number.

Ah yes

Originally posted by Wulf9

then used the planner's celebral constant (educated guess) to get to a final number.

The Planners Secret Ingredient

“The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- See more at: http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-ph....r7W02j3S.dpuf

To my knowledge, the Census has never calculated a daytime population estimate. It is a valuable number, however, and is provided by a handful of third-party data vendors. Again, it is only an estimate, and the private sources base theirs only on data available for the whole country. They are most likely using commuting patterns as the major determinant. You can find commuting pattern information at http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/data.htm.

The Economic Census is now available online. It is at http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/. Information is available at levels of geography including national, state, county, metropolitan, and micropolitan places.

But does the economic census provide sub-municipal data, such as tract or block group? I've never seen anything, sadly.
.

Teh eocnomic census dows give employment numbers by zip code area. It is released every five yaers. The last economic census was in 2002. The data for zip code areas is currently scheduled to be released in the 2nd quarter, 2006. The data for 1997 has been available for some time.

I just remembered something that I heard recently, the Census is in the process of releasing an IMS site that provides commuting data to the BLOCK level. It is still in test & will only be available for a few states. But pretty interesting...

I've looked at the worker flow/commutation data from the decennial census to compare the total number of residents working in a particular community with the total number of non-residents commuting into that community for employment... But you really have to make a lot of assumptions -- they may not all be working during the daytime, for example. Of course the decennial census is already 5 years out of date.

I believe that Claritas, a proprietary data provider, does have workplace population estimates available for a fee.

Does "daytime population" encompass customers too, tourists, etc. too? I rarely see this term used.

The concept of the daytime population refers to the number of people who are present in an area during normal business hours, including workers. This is in contrast to the “resident” population present during the evening and nighttime hours. Information on the expansion or contraction experienced by different communities between nighttime and daytime populations is important for many planning purposes, including those dealing with transportation, disaster, and relief operations

^ Then my main problem is just trying to figure out their site - as the only reference to any zip level tabular data I found either had a $ amount or it was deliverable only by CD-rom.

Thanks for the confirmation that it IS there & free. I'll just keep digging.

EDIT: Still searching, but at least the geographic data selection through American Factfinder does not include zip codes.

What I have found - still - is this: http://www.census.gov/epcd/ec97zip/zipcdrom.htm which is economic census data in Access format based on zip code. But so far nothing about downloading online. I did find a viewer that you can type in the zip code & it displays the results, which you can then download - but of course I don't want to download every zip code independantly.